I should have loved biology • Hacker News Board

Re: I should have loved biology

#31

Post by shpongled » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

axg11 wrote: post #25

I think what is described here comes down to the fact that we don't have much (any?) _deep_ understanding of biology. The most concrete aspects of biology are observations. For example, anatomy is very well understood because it's essentially observations of structures within living organisms, as field it has been relatively stable for a long time, hence there are well-established methods for teaching anatomy. There'…

I would argue that depends on your definition of deep - we are certainly getting better at developing both genetic and chemical tools that allow us to probe specific pathways/sub-systems of biology, and read out the resulting perturbed phenotype(s).

> There's a huge gap between the fundamental units of biology (biochemistry) and the resulting emergent behaviour (living things). We don't have a good bottom-up system to predict the emergent behaviour so we're mostly left with observing from the top down and poking/prodding sub-systems, hoping to gain some insight.

I think this is just about the last thing that we will ever solve/figure out.

There are just a mind-boggling number of parameters, feedback loops, dynamic modifications, interactions, etc that are effecting cellular state (let alone organism state) - something that I think many CS oriented folks ignore when talking about "DNA as source code" (perhaps if program behavior depended on the size of indents, font, variable names, how many lines of code you wrote, the proximity in source location of different functions, etc).

Re: I should have loved biology

#32

Post by onychomys » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

axg11 wrote: post #25

I think what is described here comes down to the fact that we don't have much (any?) _deep_ understanding of biology. The most concrete aspects of biology are observations. For example, anatomy is very well understood because it's essentially observations of structures within living organisms, as field it has been relatively stable for a long time, hence there are well-established methods for teaching anatomy. There'…

> There's a huge gap between the fundamental units of biology (biochemistry) and the resulting emergent behaviour (living things).

And then a very similar gap between the fundamental units of one small branch of biology, ecology, where the fundamental units are living things and the emergent behavior is everything you see outside your window! We have a lot of math that explains how things act and evolve together and it's all just the tiniest little smidge of what actually happens.

Re: I should have loved biology

#33

Post by onychomys » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

begueradj wrote: post #29

Unfortunately, nowadays there is more censorship in biology than in politics

Speaking here as a guy who started his career in organismal bio and is now working at the cellular level, all I can say to that is [citation needed].

Re: I should have loved biology

#34

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

To be fair, he wouldn’t have known what DNA and RNA were which he mentions many times in the article, if he hadn’t learned the acronym soup and the basics that biology’s wonder is built upon.

Re: I should have loved biology

#35

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:31 PM UTC

formerkrogemp wrote: post #12

The_suffocated wrote: post #5

I think this is not a biology-only phenomenon. I have the impression that chemistry and mathematics are also not taught well in many (if not most) high schools. Physics education in contrast seems to be in better shape.

Let's just agree that US high school education is generally abysmal.

If you think US high school education is abysmal where do you think does it better? US Asians do very well compared to other Asians, US whites to other whites, etc.

https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-school-test-sco...

Re: I should have loved biology

#36

Post by Pulcinella » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #9

There are additional factors that make molecules in cells not subject to pure diffusion rules. Charge depending on the pH of the area ( even if in such a crowded space it is likely not really a pH anymore), and molecular interactions. Proteins (and virtually any other molecules but proteins and to a lesser extent nucleic acids are particularly good at that) can stick or be repulsed by their overall composition (exter…

Yeah see the art of David Goodsell. I believe he said the concentrations of the various biomolecules are roughly accurate based on calculations he does before starting painting. Cells are incredibly crowded. The human body being 60-70% water is usually presented in pop-sci as “wow we are mostly water!” but that’s actually very concentrated for chemical reactions. You usually don’t perform reactions that concentrated in a lab whether it’s biochemistry, organic chemistry, inorganic, analytical, etc. It’s a wonder all this stuff doesn’t just gunk up and precipitate out of solution.

https://ccsb.scripps.edu/goodsell/

Re: I should have loved biology

#37

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:33 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #14

One of my favourite course I took when studying physics at university was “Biological Nanomachines”. I find it absolutely bizarre that trying to gain a physical intuition for biology is not the norm. Throughout school I hated biology because it really did just feel like rote learning. This is embarrassing but I had such a poor understanding of what a cell was by the end of HS biology that I still had an image in my m…

> “the cell wants to x” is language that we can’t use in a HS classroom

If you can’t use language like that you’re giving up on getting anything through to over half of the class. Trying to impart information to people who don’t care and aren’t interested is amazingly hard. Not using agentic framing makes it harder.

Re: I should have loved biology

#38

Post by the_only_law » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

I did love Biology. In fact, I think it was my first real interest before computers or programming.

Some aspects of the field still fascinate me, but I know if I ever bothered to engage the interest I'd be broke.

Re: I should have loved biology

#39

Post by atty » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

axg11 wrote: post #25

I think what is described here comes down to the fact that we don't have much (any?) _deep_ understanding of biology. The most concrete aspects of biology are observations. For example, anatomy is very well understood because it's essentially observations of structures within living organisms, as field it has been relatively stable for a long time, hence there are well-established methods for teaching anatomy. There'…

You can have what I would consider deep knowledge of a system without the ability to manufacture it or modify it. For instance, we have pretty deep knowledge of how the sun or other stars work, but we can’t even begin to dream about creating one, or controlling one.

In the same way, we know a lot of how biology works. Obviously nowhere near all of it; but we are far beyond just scratching the surface. It just turns out that modifying a working complex system is pretty hard.

Re: I should have loved biology

#40

Post by P-NP » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

6th paragraph: Someone should have said this to me: Imagine a flashy spaceship lands in your backyard. The door opens and you are invited to investigate everything to see what you can learn. The technology is clearly millions of years beyond what we can make. This is biology. –Bert Hubert, “Our Amazing Immune System”